Few details are known about the sale. Their contents are kept secret, but they reportedly included precision-guided munitions, small diameter bombs, bunker busters, small arms and other lethal means.
The Biden administration has become increasingly critical of Israel’s military operations in Gaza and its failure to provide significant amounts of humanitarian aid, as the death toll now surpasses 30,000 and famine looms in the enclave due to Netanyahu’s government blocks land food supplies. In this context, Washington continues to secretly send a significant flow of ammunition to help replace the tens of thousands of bombs that Israel has dropped on the small coastal strip, making it one of the most intense bombing campaigns in military history, he noted. the publication.
White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre declined to comment on the WP report Wednesday. The US administration is taking advantage of the fact that the Arms Export Control Act establishes important exceptions for US arms sales to close allies. The deal’s limit is $25 million for “major defense equipment,” but increases to $100 million for other “defense items,” such as bombs.
“This is not only an attempt to evade technical compliance with US arms export law, it is an extremely troubling way to avoid transparency and accountability on a high-profile issue,” said Ari Tolani, director of security assistance monitoring at the Center for International Affairs. Policy think tank. By taking advantage of this loophole, the Biden administration was following in the footsteps of its predecessor, he said. “They are borrowing a lot of Trump’s methods to evade congressional oversight,” Tolani said. The State Department inspector general’s office found that between 2017 and 2019, the Trump administration made 4,221 subthreshold arms transfers to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, totaling $11.2 billion.
The Biden administration’s secret shipments to Israel were in addition to three major military sales that have been made public since the start of the Gaza war: precision bomb kits worth $320 million in November, 14,000 tank shells per value of 106 million dollars and 147.5 million dollars as part. of an agreement to supply fuzes and other components needed to manufacture 155mm artillery shells in December. The deliveries of tanks and artillery shells were made without congressional approval because they were made “under emergency conditions.”
